Rushil rummages in his box and pulls out a multitool with a flat-headed rod on one end and a power socket on the other. “Here.” He rolls it to me.
I unbolt the tile, fit the flat end of the multitool into the thin crack between the ship’s scales, and pry it down. All at once, a sticky gush of coolant pours out, spattering the pavement, and a burned-plastic smell chokes the air. Rushil hops back in time, but my legs ends up soaked in goop.
“Ugh.” I push a slick of it off me.
Rushil pulls a rag from his back pocket, utterly failing to hide the fact he’s trying not to laugh. “At least now you know what knocked out the door motors.”
I send a mock glare his way and reach up to wipe a glop of coolant from the sloop’s connectors with the rag. He’s right. The coolant leak has shorted out almost all the connections between the secondary power cell and the door’s motorized functions. The connectors are all bust, blackened and giving off the acrid smell of burned electronics. I cover my nose with my arm and finish cleaning them off as best I can. Rushil watches as I pop out the connectors what haven’t fused themselves to the backing panel, then chip out the ones that have. When I’m done, all that’s left are the ash outlines of the connectors and frayed sets of wires pigtailing out of their reinforcement tubes.
I slide back the panel leading to the coolant conduits. More of the viscous goop slops out. Maybe a break in the line, I think. I flip a switch on the multitool so it beams a blue-white circle of light and wriggle the top half of my body into the ship’s innards.
“What’s wrong? Can you see?” Rushil’s voice comes muffled from the other side of the hull.
I slide the beam along the conduits. Long splits and fissures glisten with leaking coolant all up and down the length of the lines. I let out an involuntary gasp, and then a groan.
“What is it?” Rushil asks again.
I run the light over the lines again, only half believing what I see. I’ve never seen anything so bust. Stress fractures split them like gashes down a man’s back. It must be from the ship’s inner workings changing temperature too quickly, too many times. I half remember Perpétue saying something about having to lay down a good sum to replace them again soon.
“The coolant conduits are ragged,” I call out.
“Here, let me see,” he says.
I duck out and hand over the light to him. His torso disappears into the ship. At last he speaks. “This is bad, Ava.”
“I know.” I give a short, hysterical laugh.
Rushil ducks out of the ship and crouches beneath it. “You’re lucky it didn’t choke and send you into a death spiral on the way over from the flightport.” He flicks his light up. “Can you fix it?”
I bite my lip, weighing everything. “I maybe could, but it would take forever. And the money for parts . . .”
I stare at Miyole, sitting in the shadow of Rushil’s trailer. She pokes at the dirt with a stick, Pala asleep beside her. I’ve managed to keep up my end of our curry bargain and even pay Rushil back some, but one ticket for the bullet train to Khajjiar costs more than my fake ID. And I’ve realized I don’t need just one ticket, I need two. It’s bad enough leaving Miyole alone while I work. It near kills me how much longer it means I have to wait, but I can’t leave her for two full days while I go chasing Luck’s ghost.
“You know, I might have some extra tubing,” Rushil says.
I close my eyes. “Stop. You know I can’t take anything more from you.”
“It’s really nothing, Ava.” Rushil gestures at the jumble of ship parts piled nearby. “Half my business is stripping old ships for resale parts. And I know a girl, my friend Zarine—she sells new components. She’d give us a deal on anything we couldn’t scrounge up here.”
I stare at him, wary. I want my ship fixed. Of course I do. Because then, forget the train, I could fly to Khajjiar. I could be there in an afternoon, and Luck would see my ship’s shadow on the grass and come running. Then I wouldn’t ever have to go begging to my modrie, because Luck and me, we could take care of Miyole ourselves. And then I might stop feeling like my heart is choking me.
“I don’t get much for scrap tubing. You’d be doing me a favor.” Rushil breaks my reverie. He examines his hands as he squats in the shadow of Perpétue’s ship, and then squints up at me. “I want you to have it.”
I smooth my data pendant with my thumb. The thought of Luck running to me makes my body ache, I want it so much. But then I count my debts—docking and the ID, coins for the screener and a hand with repairs, plus a thousand other small kindnesses, tea and blankets and bandages. I run a hand over the ship’s tiles. “Let me think on it.”
Rushil’s smile drops. “Sure.” He ducks out from beneath the sloop and glances at the time on his crow. “Sure. You know, I’ve got . . . stuff to do. Repairs. Anyway . . .”
“Rushil, wait.”
He stops and turns back to me. We stare at each other, the awkwardness growing. I don’t know how to say what I mean—that his kindness is making me uneasy, even if it’s well meant.
“Can I show you something?”
I climb into the sloop’s hold and mount the ladder to the cockpit. Rushil follows me silently.
Dust has settled on the controls, and the air has gone stuffy and still. I move aside so Rushil can see the cockpit walls, covered floor to ceiling in Miyole’s metal art. The fish-tailed women and roosters and boats ripple in the afternoon sun, muted colors surfacing in the brown and gray metal, like the rainbow in an oil slick.
Rushil comes to a stop in the door, mouth open. I recognize the look that crosses his face—surprise, confusion, slow-dawning delight. It’s how I felt the first time I saw all of her creatures gathered together this way.
“What are they?” he asks.
“Miyole makes them.” I swallow a lump in my throat. “Made them. Before.”
Rushil touches one of them, a flaming heart, gingerly. “They’re beautiful. She could sell these down by the station.”
I shake my head. “She made them for her mother.”
“Oh.” Rushil winces. “Sorry. Foot in mouth.”
“When we lost her . . .” I stop and clear my throat. “They said it never stormed there, but there was a storm. And Miyole’s mother, she had me fly the ship while she went down to the rooftop. . . . ”
I stare straight ahead at a sun radiating wavy lines. “Sometimes I think, It should have been me. I should have gone down to get her, and then Perpétue would be alive, and Miyole wouldn’t be like this. They would both be alive.”
“But you wouldn’t be,” Rushil says quietly.
I shrug. “What difference would that make?” If I weren’t in the world, who would even know? Wouldn’t Perpétue have been of more use alive than me?
“Don’t talk like that.” Rushil’s voice is low, but there’s a tremor to it. “You don’t know . . . you don’t know how it would have been different.”